Utopian potentials in Sky space:

There’s no ‘space’ like home

‘Utopia does not slip off from infinite movement: etymologically it stands for absolute deterritorialisation but always the critical point at which it is connected with the present relative milieu and especially with the forces stifled by this milieu’ 

The technology of drones is a bridge of the present to the future, engineering a utopia in the sky. The drone acts as a projective fantasy of existing in a ‘smooth’ space above the land and sea and in the air space that navigates between a position of the nomad and the state of striation of the state. Within the globalised world, expanding terrains and amassing populations where violence and terror propose an uncertainty within our environments the technology of the drone is colonising and transforming the space of the sky. The anthropomorphised drone emerges as a searching gaze. The utopian freedom of droning effectively vitalizes futurologies of searching and inhabiting the sky. In Jonathan Swifts satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels is the floating island city of Laputa that ‘cannot travel any further than four miles above the earth as the island depends on a loadstone magnet that astronomers direct’, however the King of Laputa can deprive the cities below of sun and rain, both spaces are relying on one another for survival and in tern the smooth space of the sky and the striated space below can only exist as a mixture of both spaces. What resonates is a ‘nomadic utopianism’ and technological utopia that can be envisaged through the humanitarian ‘good drone’ that effectively brings the human body and sky space closer together. These are steps towards future envisions of technology in the drone that can disrupt the status quo within society altering modes of existence for the better in relation to humanitarian aid, infrastructure that joins land to the sky and sustainable environments within the sky space.

Vertical density is being embraced throughout global cities to cope with the rapid urban growth of population, ‘in 2050, over 80% of the world population will live in urban areas’, a time when the population is expected to reach 9 billion, architecturally and politically it is the only belief that to survive this we must build towards the sky, the eco tower. The Kardashev scale weighs the possibilities of futuristic progression against the destruction and chaos; in tern measuring the status of our civilisations, our technological abilities against our future techno possibilities and a measure of civilisations advancement under the energy that we are able to utilise. The main theory of Kardashev scale energy is that the status of a social and cultural system is ‘determined by the amount of energy harnessed’.  The scale has three categories, based on space colonisation and the usable energy the planet has at it disposal, ‘a Type I civilisation has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, Type III of its galaxy’. We are currently in Type 0 civilisation, within one hundred to two hundred years it is possible that we could reach Type I status. As historian Michio Kaku explains, ‘any advanced civilisation in space will eventually find three sources of energy at their disposal: their planet, their star, and their galaxy. There is no other choice’.

With the uncertainty of terror and violence looking to the sky and its possibilities that can merge with ground space has the prospect to create a technological harmony of utopias, advancement in society and protection of resources for sustainability. The Kardashevn theories success remains on the potential of humanities uses in resource and ideals this can be found in the work of artists who work with space and air. The installation Solar Bell by Tomas Saraceno’s in 2013 is a structure that is capable of lifting to the sky through the use of lightweight materials and sustainable energy, ‘when the wind takes the structures aloft, the paper thin solar panels function as sails’, an observation of future cities in the sky sustaining the earth. In regards to advancing technology in drones and air the Pollution combat droning has been used in China to combat its endangering air pollution problems using parafoil drones, it carries chemicals and disperses them through the air to reduce the amount of PM.2 that are fine pollutant particles that are damaging. This is where society shifts its gaze once again to look to the sky to enable a sustained environment that is safe and pro-long earths resources.

Tomas Saraceno’s exhibition, ‘Aerocene’, discusses a speculative future, his project encompasses air filled sculptures, that float around the world with the heat of the sun and infrared radiation, it can take a sustainable journey presenting the openness of movement navigating the skies that is ecologically viable. The exhibition is questioning our dependency on fossil and hydrocarbon fuels and the polluting of earth to further challenge the gaze. The work is disruptive of the space as it floats but in tern heightens the surrounding elements. Deleuze and Guattari examine the hostile life of mankind opposing progressive development, ‘the state not as a new stage in revolution, but as a level of overcoding superimposed on territorial society’, this is the state philosophy of power that resonates today. Through projects such as Saraceno’s Aerocene it is representative of sustainable capability of airspaces, ‘the global war on terror served to erase geographical distinctions and limitations’ it acts as an imagined global space of the notion of how societies can be organised around future risks to life.

What develops from this is the ‘nomad’ that stems from lone thinkers outside of the entrapment of state philosophy, ‘secret link constituted by the critique of negativity, the cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the exteriority of forces and relations, the denunciation of power’, from this force an orientation occurs through resistance and a progressive new spaces of existing open.  Therefore Tomas Saraeno, becomes the nomad, provoking the boundaries of society, ‘highlighting the destructive nature of humanity’s effects on Earth in the current epoch and proposing an alternative future’, this interconnecting utopia that cloud cities proposes is rooted in our historical identification with cosmology; challenging a relationship between the built world and the environment to be found within the sky. This resonated to ‘Le Corbusiers five points of architecture’, in his Villa Savoye ‘placed in the midst of chaotic nature, man for his security creates and surrounds himself with a zone of protection in harmony with what he think he needs as a retreat’, held up on reinforced concrete stilts allowing for a free façade and roof garden to compensate for the green area the building was consuming, the architecture of Le Corbusier represents the beginning of modern architecture that looks up to the sky space above being grounded for a freedom of the body. The age of electronics during the years of 1958 to 1973 immersed architects in an idea of radical cities, echoing ideas of the 1920’s dispersed city. This resonates to the architects Archigram and their collages of the walking city that present a dislocating city moving into the realm of the ‘urban nomad’.

The nomadic thought ‘In A Thousand Plateaus’ transitions in what Deleuze and Guattari conceptualise as the nomadic war machine of relational forces. Through this loci arises new environments, ‘in no way has war as its object, but rather the emission of quanta of deterritorialisation’, this concepts envisions a movement that escapes the state and looks beyond to unknown forces of progression. Nomadic thought and its apparatus is a representative of the drone machine and how it enables the human gaze and the body to move across spatial territories of societal and political schemes of existence, the denunciation of control on the ground that have the potential to exclude areas of society and places. The politics of the good drones stare are seen in the advances in humanitarian aid and stimulate a future where the body exists in an inverse environment of superior air power. In 2016 Rwanda launched the first world delivery service of blood to transfusing facilities using drones to the western area where road and health infrastructure is life threatening. Upon order using via text hospitals recieve the delivery within hours, ‘the drones have increased the speed of delivery from weeks or months to just hours’; this effectively creates a medical and transportation infrastructure within the sky and a potential to open up the lives of people living in remote areas of the world. An effective step towards utopian medical potential.

Deleuze and Guatteri through the nomad distinguish two opposing kinds of space, the striated space and the smooth space. This is between the nomad that occupies the smooth space of ‘movement without aim or destination, without departure or arrival, without departure or arrival’ and the striated space representative of the state apparatus. This acts an a binary system where both opposing forces can only exist and operate in a mixture as the smooth space, ‘multiplicity which changes in nature when it divides, this creating new arrangements of forces, new possibilities of life’, the fluidity of the nomadic enables its removal from the static systems. An ambulance zone designed to saves life through an integrated deliberator was created in 2014, the ‘carebot’s will help people live better, longer and with more freedom than of the past ever thought possible’, providing medical treatment the drone will also link to a live remote call with a on-call doctor. This could drastically decrease deaths due to heart attacks as the potential for this to fall below cancer as a source of death is due to‘ one million people in Europe suffer from cardiac arrests’, with only 8% surviving due to slow response of the over stretching of ambulance services in our increasing density of population. This installation captures what could be the potential for the prospect of safety for liveable futures in the sky through the enabling of drones as an emergency care utopian resource.

The territory of the nomad that stands in opposition to striated space which is that of the state creates territories through the nomadic body distributing itself in open space, intern over-coding institutional forces. The desire of utopia thought of the drone that allows the human body to move through the sky becomes a utopia because it is grounded in the striated space, ‘nomadic escapes and movements would be nothing if they did not return to molar organisations’. Through the reversal and navigation of this space as a utopia, to exist in either space solely is damaging to utopian ideals of freedom. The Continuous Monument by the radical architectural group Superstudio is the very emblem of negative utopias, ‘The continuous model concept’ through the means of total urbanisation as a claim of the effect of globalisation across the world ‘leaving the Earth a featureless as the smoothest desert’, this was anti architecture campaign against the route architectural design was taking and leading under a political disillusionment, lacking a consciousness of freedom. In this essence the technology of the drone creates an airspace infrastructure that adjoins cities, towns and villages as opposed to the dystopia of the worlds structure emerging as one in the thought of Superstudio.

Deterritoralized spaces of the smooth that become reterritoialized spaces of striated is an emblem of the new. The political struggles and freedoms today that have stemmed from the beginning of globalisation in the 1970s is a historical process determined by Deleuze and Guatarri; where the opposition of the nomad is aggressively creative in space, the state acts as a consolidator to these desires. This is due to the states absorption of nomadic aggression into its very core, ‘everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place and then the whole process will begin all over again’ the engraining of this then opens up renewed nomadic action. Through this there is no final point or resolution, it transcends portable urban, medical and social environments potential for a utopia future with human settlements and expansion are within the skies. This can promote and enable to begin with consciously local utopias within the global environment, this term has been labeled the ‘globalisation referring to this global nexus, both as an idea and lived reality’. A globalised utopia was formed in the 1990’s in the mountains of northern Spain by a group of British, French and Spanish me and women, with a community of forty people that has lasted two decades. They have been effectively surviving through sustainable resources. However to create their utopia they live in the heights of the mountains closer to the smooth space of the earth but maintain survival through resources of the striated space. The way of seeing through the drones eyes gaze is a development on, ‘both sides of this dialectic, while these utopias maintain hope in the ‘abstract’ they refuse to tell us anything concrete about a particular thing, the alternative experience of space and collectivity to which we will inevitably give our allegiance’. The drone acts as the human eye in the sky; one that enables us through technology to experience the skies but at the same time submits us to the boundary between human and machine. This technological process however brings us closer to the possibilities of inhabiting the sky with the human body itself.

Bibliography

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